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Homeland security scraps plan to impose two-tier lab system
Homeland security officials have agreed to scrap a plan that some lawmakers feared would have cost three national laboratories millions of dollars in contracts and significant prestige, officials said Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security will not pursue a forced two-tiered system for allocating scientific homeland security work. The plan, first offered in December, had supporters of the three labs, including Brookhaven in Long Island, worried about their standing in the national system. "We will allow each lab to make their own decision as to how they can best maximize their contributions to the Department and continuing their mission," said Michelle Petrovich, a spokeswoman for the science and technology arm of DHS. "The relationship between DHS and the labs is a brand new relationship and one that we consider vital." House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., praised the reversal as "a big win, not just for New York or Brookhaven, but for common sense. The plan, first floated in December, would have designated five "intramural" labs which would work exclusively on government security projects, and three "extramural" labs which would compete with private sector facilities for such federal funding.
www.newsday.com
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DHS Issues First PPE Standards for First Responders
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology division has adopted its first standards regarding personal protective equipment developed to protect first responders against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incidents. The department adopted five National Fire Protection Association standards and three NIOSH standards. The department says the standards are designed to assist state and local officials in procurement decisions related to first responder equipment. In addition, these guidelines will assist manufacturers by providing performance standards and test methods.
safety2.blr.com
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Low-data video 'eye' proves a hit in combat zone
A new video surveillance system has captured the interest of military authorities after its successful use in the Iraq war. The Pentagon has ordered tests of more advanced versions for use in unmanned tanks and reconnaissance planes, encouraging the inventor, a small Scottish company, to pursue other security applications, both military and civilian. The technology, an encoding device and software developed by Essential Viewing in Glasgow, compresses video data and sends it with virtually no delay over just about any communications network, even low-capacity military radio systems. Its use in Iraq allowed commanders far from the action to see what their troops and special forces in the field were seeing. Essential Viewing is now marketing its systems to defence contractors and government agencies in the United States and elsewhere, and has signed on to provide equipment for several pilot projects involving technology intended for use in warfare, intelligence gathering and law enforcement. The technology is also thought to be under consideration as part of a more controversial system for use aboard commercial jetliners to provide intelligence during hijackings. Small cameras placed around the cabin and cockpit would collect video images, which could be beamed over a plane's radio to the seat-back monitor of a sky marshal, security services on the ground or a computer on the desk of the Secretary of Homeland Security.
straitstimes.asia1.com.sg
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Seoul lays out security goals
South Korea has restated its commitment to help the North dismantle all its nuclear facilities in order to prevent future crises on the Korean Peninsula. After resolving the current 17-month-old dispute, Seoul plans to seek actively to reduce military costs on both sides and establish a permanent peace agreement to replace the armistice treaty signed after the 1950-53 Korean War. In an attempt to help the public understand more clearly the 1-year-old administration's policy guidelines, the Roh Moo-hyun government for the first time has published a book that details its security and foreign policy goals. The presidential National Security Council authored the book, titled "Peace, Prosperity and National Security," after consultations with Foreign, Defense and Unification Ministries and the National Intelligence Service. The government has laid out four basic strategic principles for South Korea's security: peace and prosperity, balanced pragmatism, cooperative self-defense and comprehensive security. To realize these goals, Seoul will strive to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis, establish a permanent peace agreement with the North and develop at the same time its independent self-defense capabilities and the Korea-U.S. alliance.
www.koreaherald.co.kr
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Security Policies: The Framework for Protection
Blended threats, as well as Warhol, flash and zero-day threats are driving public and private institutions to feel a greater sense of urgency regarding information security. The effects of blended threats are evident with a look back at the impact of last year's Slammer, SoBig and Blaster worms. These fast-spreading worms disrupted network operations and services around the world. But the speed of blended threats pales in comparison to what's on the horizon. Warhol threats promise to spread across the Internet in just minutes. Flash threats accelerate the potential for widespread Internet infection to mere seconds. And zero-day threats -- that is, threats that exploit unknown and, therefore, unprotected vulnerabilities -- introduce the possibility of the simultaneous appearance of a vulnerability and its exploit. Because these threats will leave little, if any, time to respond, the reactive security measures of the past will no longer suffice. Add to that the increased availability of progressively sophisticated hacker tools for exploiting security vulnerabilities, and the drawbacks of reactive security become clear.
www.x-changemag.com
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Border agents will get access to fingerprint databases this year
A majority of the nation's border agents will be able to access key FBI fingerprint databases by the end of 2004, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Thursday. In making the announcement, Ridge challenged one of the central conclusions of a recent report from the Justice Department's inspector general. The report said the FBI and Homeland Security are years away from sharing access to two main fingerprint verification systems, the IDENT database and the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). "The FBI, the DHS and local law enforcement agencies still are far from a fully integrated system that will automatically check the fingerprints of apprehended aliens against all IDENT and IAFIS records," the report concluded. "According to the latest schedule, the deployment of a fully integrated fingerprint system is at least four years away. We believe this continues the significant risk that aliens who should be detained ... instead will be released because border patrol agents will not learn of their significant criminal or deportation history."
www.govexec.com
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Law enforcement officers warn of Internet predators
The anonymity offered by the Internet makes it the perfect tool for pedophiles and other sexual predators to contact their victims, law enforcement officers at the Baxter County Sheriff's Department told members of Mountain Home Girl Scout Troop 12 Monday afternoon. Sheriff Joe Edmonds, Capt. James Madison and Sgt. Tim Phillips shared information during a session on Internet safety. "We have had a female victim in Arkansas," Edmonds told the group. "We never want to see that happen in Baxter County, and we believe the best defense is education." He added that the very fact authorities are educating the public might help deter predators. The Arkansas victim thought she was chatting with someone in another state, but her Internet "friend" was actually a predator who was at a nearby motel, Phillips said. He said the girl shared information that let the man know she was home by herself, and he came to her house, kidnapped and killed her. "Thousands and thousands of sexual predators use the Internet as their feeding grounds," Phillips said, stressing the importance of not sharing personal information online. He showed an Internet safety video filmed by the Little Rock Police Department called "Danger is Just a Click Away." Madison said they use that video because it shows what can happen close to home. The video calls the Internet a gateway to the entire world, but points out that it can be a dangerous playground for children and teens to explore unattended.
www.baxterbulletin.com
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Law enforcement training center turns on new network
The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center has revved up a new network linking its Georgia headquarters with facilities in three states and the District of Columbia. ?We needed to upgrade our communications services to integrate with other Homeland Security agencies, as well as to improve services to our sites,? said Pat Hill, chief of the center?s Communications Management Branch. The center, which provides training for 75 federal agencies as well as state and local organizations, became part of the Homeland Security Department when the new department was created last year. The new communications system, which came online last month, is a fully managed network provided by Sprint Corp. under its FTS 2001 contract. The network includes frame relay and dedicated IP transport. Under the $3 million, three-year contract, Sprint does engineering design, manages private network services for custom-configured equipment, handles security for firewall design and management, and runs network services for router configuration and management. The center has its headquarters in Glynco, Ga., and other facilities in Artesia, N.M.; Charleston, S.C.; Cheltenham, Md.; and Washington.
www.gcn.com
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Science can fall into evil hands
A committee of experts is being created to set guidelines aimed at keeping government-funded scientific research from producing potential weapons for bioterrorists, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Thursday. The new board will concern itself with "dual-use" science that might lead to knowledge potentially valuable to bioterrorists as well as the peaceful purposes for which it was intended, Thompson said. While free scientific inquiry has made the United States a world leader in valuable biomedical research, he said, "sadly, the very same tools developed to better the health and condition of humankind can also be used for its destruction." The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity will function in a manner recommended last fall by a committee of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies of Science. The council's study was partially underwritten by a $421,000 grant from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, headed by former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and businessman Ted Turner. In a report published last October, the council recommended that researchers be required to show their proposals to committees of experts at their own institutions, which would decide if the work posed risks. These committees, known as institutional biosafety committees, already exist at more than 400 colleges, universities and other science centers around the country.
www.ajc.com
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Earthlink to test sender authentication
ISP (Internet service provider) Earthlink Inc. will soon begin testing new e-mail security technology, including Microsoft Corp.'s recently released Caller ID technology, a company executive said. Earthlink will be experimenting "very soon," with "sender authentication" technology including Caller ID and a similar plan called Sender Policy Framework (SPF). The Atlanta-based ISP will be evaluating other e-mail security proposals as well, but is not backing any specific technology, said Robert Sanders, chief architect at Earthlink. Plans to secure e-mail by verifying the source of e-mail messages have garnered much attention in recent months, as the volume of unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, has swelled and the number of Internet scams has increased. Spammers and Internet-based criminals often fake, or "spoof," the origin of e-mail messages to trick recipients into opening them and trusting their content. Sender authentication technologies attempt to stop spoofing by matching the source of e-mail messages with a specific user or an approved e-mail server for the Internet domain that the message purports to come from. So far, Earthlink has stayed out of the sender authentication fray while Web-based e-mail services, including Yahoo Inc. and Hotmail, and major ISP America Online Inc. (AOL), have all backed slightly different sender authentication proposals. Yahoo is promoting an internally developed technology called DomainKeys, that uses public key cryptography to "sign" e-mail messages. AOL said in January that it is testing SPF for outgoing mail, publishing the IP (Internet protocol) addresses of its e-mail servers in an SPF record in the DNS (Domain Name System). Finally, Microsoft-owned Hotmail is publishing the addresses of its e-mail servers using that company's recently announced Caller ID standard. Earthlink believes that sender authentication is necessary, and is prepared to support multiple sender authentication standards if necessary. However, the company hopes that one clear winner emerges from the field of competing proposals, Sanders said.
www.infoworld.com
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